The blog of fantasy author Shanna Swendson. Read about my adventures in publishing and occasionally life.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Sloth

As a public service to help my readers live better lives, I offer the following tip:

If you haven't used your alarm clock in about a week, don't just turn on the alarm and assume that it's still set at your usual wake-up time. Always be sure to check what time is set. Otherwise, it may turn out that the last time you used the alarm, it was changed from your usual wake-up time so you could get up at 4:30 in the morning to catch an early flight. Then the alarm will go off at 4:30 when you're not expecting it to, and it will take you a while to figure out what's going on, why you're awake, and why the radio is on. You'll frantically fumble in your semi-conscious state to make the noise stop, which means you'll turn the alarm off and then end up oversleeping because the alarm won't go off when you need it to and you'll be extra tired after waking up in the middle of the night. There's also the danger that in fumbling to turn the alarm off, you'll accidentally turn it back on, but for the beeper instead of the radio, so it will go off again the next morning in an even more annoying way.

Not that (ahem) I know anyone this has happened to. It's just a cautionary tale that maybe sort of could happen. You know, under the right circumstances to some person. Just don't let it happen to you.

I'm seriously starting to be annoyed by my own sloth. I don't know why, but I've lately had a hard time forcing myself to get any work done. It's an incredible effort to drag myself out of bed, no matter what time I got to sleep. I have a mile-long to-do list of things I just don't want to deal with. All my early January gung-ho new year attitude has gone by the wayside. Even my housekeeping has slacked off -- and it actually takes effort to be a worse housekeeper than I usually am. I never got off the ground with my vow to exercise more. Maybe it all had something to do with the cold, dark, wet winter we've been having. I've wanted to do nothing but crawl under a blanket and stay there. It's supposed to be warm this week, which will be nice. I'm determined to get back on track this week.

But wouldn't you know, the day I decide to get myself back on track and going turns out to be a national holiday. I have a list of questions for my editor and publicist that I need answered before I can move forward on a few things, and they're out of the office. There's no mail delivery. There's not even trash pickup, and the dumpster is full so I can't go on a housecleaning binge and take the trash out. When did people start getting President's Day as a holiday? I never got it, even when I was working for the state. When they started giving us MLK Day they took away President's Day. I definitely never got the day off when working for a PR agency.

On the bright side, that may mean that I actually get some revision work done since all my business to-do items have to be moved to tomorrow. In the next week and a half, I have to revise half a book. I also need to revise an essay and get some things together for promotions, since the release date is just a little more than two months away. That means no more procrastinating and goofing off. I'm going to force myself to use the things that usually delay work as rewards once the work is done.

In other news, the first review for Damsel Under Stress is in, from my old friends at Armchair Interviews. Apparently, the book doesn't suck. Yay!